SEVEN

The next day, Sera had been led out of the room by Finn, claiming he wanted to show her around the pack, he wanted to show her what it'd become. The tour lasted four hours.

Finn walked her through every corner of Ironwood territory, she took in how bad the situation was; the crumbling walls, the empty warehouses, the nursery where pups cried from hunger their mothers couldn't satisfy. He didn't lecture or try to convince her of anything. He simply showed her the truth, and let the truth do its work, and perhaps that had been the intention all along, to show her how much that pack was suffering so she'd willing want to help.

The nursery was the worst.

Sera stood at the doorway completely frozen, as a dozen pups under the age of five lay on thin mats. Their faces were pale, their eyes were dull. The faint glow of shifter magic that should have pulsed beneath their skin was barely visible, it was just a flicker, like a candle about to die.

She stared at them and she just couldn't understand what was happening, she didn't understand what had brought about this. Ironwood used to be so strong and perfect before, yet it had now turned into a literal shadow of what it used to be.

"Magic famine," Finn said quietly from behind her. "The territory's ley lines are failing. Adults can survive on reserves, pups can't."

Sera's throat tightened.

A little girl with dark braids and hollow cheeks lifted her head, her eyes found Sera's, she had omega eyes, beautiful eyes rimmed with gold, eyes which were soft and starving.

"You're the primal omega," the girl whispered. "Are you going to save us?"

Sera couldn't answer, how could she? What could she possibly say to her? She stared at her like she was some savior, but deep down, she was just as lost as all of them.

Overwhelmed, she turned and walked out.

The elderly omegas were next. They were housed in a converted storage building with thin blankets and cold soup. They looked at Sera not with hope, but with resignation, like they didn't even care if she saved them or not. They'd been dying for years, they'd made peace with it.

"We heard what he did to you," one old woman said, her voice cracked with age. She touched her own throat, where a scar similar to Sera's lay faded and silver. "My mate rejected me too. Fifty years ago. I never healed, niether will you."

Sera touched her own scar.

"It was inhumane. People laughed during the ritual, they laughed while I bled out." The woman said, and sera remembered all to well how they'd laughed, how they'd scorned her. Her first clenched as tears stung the back of her eyes.

This very same pack had been very unkind to her, why was it her problem that they were dying?

"But the pups," the woman continued. "The pups don't deserve to pay for our pain."

Her words dug at something deep inside her, she knew she was right, but yet, it was so hard to accept.

She left that building faster than the first.

The training yard showed her the enforcers, they were completely exhausted, underfed, and training with broken equipment because there was nothing else. Finn pointed out the empty racks where weapons once hung. The shattered dummies, thr blood on the stones from practice matches that went too far because desperation made men careless.

"Silas has been picking us off for two years," Finn said. "Small attacks, supply raids, assassinations. He's not trying to win a war. He's trying to starve us out."

Sera looked at the enforcers, and they looked back at her. Some with suspicion, some with hunger, some with anger and impatience; like they didn't understand why the alpha hadn't pinned her down already and fucks his pups into her, some with something that looked like prayer.

They all thought she was their salvation, but in truth, she was just a bartender with an almost dead Wolf and a scarred throat.

She'd had about enough of the tour and she shook her head, telling Finn she wanted to head back now. And by the time they returned to the east wing, her legs were shaking from the weight of everything she'd seen.

Finn stopped outside her door.

"Supper will be brought up shortly." He told her.

"I'm not hungry." She replied immediately. After everything she'd just seen, food was the least of her concerns.

"You should eat anyway." He paused. "The Alpha didn't send me to manipulate you. He sent me because he thought you should see the truth before you made your decision. Whatever you choose, it's your choice."

With that being said, he left. The locks clicked quietly behind him and she finally let out a shuddering breath.

Wreckage was already asleep on the bed, and he only stirred a bit to look at her before going back to sleep.

Dinner was brought shortly but she didn't touch it. She simply sat in the chair by the window, staring out, taking in the death surrounding the pack. She thought about the pups, the omegas, the enforcers. Everything was crumbling.

She pressed her forehead to the cold glass and watched the dying forest fade into night.

~~

She'd fallen asleep in the chair.

Her dreams were fragments which consisted of flashes of memory tangled with things she hadn't experienced. Her mother's face blurred at the edges. The ritual clearing slick with blood. Caelan's golden eyes, ringed with red.

And then the heat crept in.

It started as a warmth in her belly, it was pleasant at first, almost soothing. She shifted in her sleep, drawing her knees toward her chest. The warmth spread; down her thighs, and up her spine, till it pooled between her legs until she was slick and achingly needy.

It felt like her wolf was stirring, like she was awake and begin to ache from the heat.

She felt it in her bones; a slow, grinding crawl, like something frozen cracking beneath the first spring thaw. Her wolf had been dormant for three years, but she could feel her now, and she was hungry.

The heat intensified. Sera moaned in her sleep, her hips began rocking against nothing as her body searched for something it couldn't find. Her skin was flushed, sweat beaded on her forehead. Her nipples tightened beneath her shirt, aching for touch, aching to be sucked and nibbled.

'we need to......mate' She heard her wolf say. 'now'

She woke with a gasp.